5 Video Marketing Sins You Must Avoid

Is your business preparing to join the video marketing party? If so, then great! Welcome to the future, otherwise known as the past two decades. You have a lot to learn, young marketer…

The best way to learn what to do is by knowing what not to do. If you thought that you could plan, shoot, edit and upload a successful video marketing campaign in an hour then think again because a lot of work and resource is required to generate a positive ROI.

Let’s take a look at five of the video marketing cardinal sins to avoid.

Going Cheap:

Please put the phone away. Although the quality of video has greatly improved on our smartphones over the last five years, they are NOT good enough to shoot a professional quality video for your marketing campaign. Invest in good quality equipment, or at least hire in professionals who have access to such equipment.

Cameras and editing equipment (again, actual software and not what came preloaded on your smartphone) do not come cheap. Set aside some of your marketing budget for equipment (and people that know how to use it) to ensure that your video represents the brand exactly how it is intended to.

Long Videos:

How long does it take for you to get bored watching an advert? You can’t wait to hit that skip button when watching cat videos on YouTube, can you? So why do so many video marketers expect their audience to be any different?

You have, at most, a 10-second window to capture your audience’s attention. If you fail to do so, then that’s another potential customer lost.

Successful viral marketing campaign relates to the audience, pinpoints a pain and offers a solution, all in the space of a matter of seconds.

The audience should be committed to your message within the first 6-7 seconds of your video, which should be no more than a minute long at most.

Posting Exclusively on YouTube:

For maximum exposure, you want to ensure that your message can be found in more than just one place. Meaning that limiting your outreach to YouTube will not yield the results that you desire, although you can obviously use the embed code and link to post elsewhere.

Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, that allows you to target a specific audience will maximise your reach to the audience that you want. YouTube and social media often work in tandem, and almost always complement each other when used effectively.